Fooling with the pair of old Jeeps has been a serious refresher on a lot of stuff I forgot or vaguely remember from HS auto mechanics.
I seem to get 1 step forward and 4 steps back.
Good sets of keywords in search engines can save time and money. There’s a lot of good information on publicly viewable Internet discussion boards for troubleshooting Jeeps. On Jeeps with computers, getting the trouble codes (even with the key switching combination for some year models) helps with most electronic repairs.
But sometimes, the computer’s self-diagnostic outputs don’t help much. Here’s an example. A woman’s Cherokee would turn over but wouldn’t start. She spent over $400 at a garage on random ignition work before having it towed home without a repair. After a couple of questions, an acquaintance of hers put a crank position sensor on it within a few minutes to get it going. Some men posting answers to discussion boards have experience with likely failures.
Searches for YouTube videos can also help. There are videos showing good ways to do some of the tougher repairs. There are also some tutorial sites with text and photos for doing transmission swaps and the like. It can be time-consuming, though, getting past search engine spam (dealers and the like).